If you’re old enough to have parked your butt on your living room’s shag carpet and twisted the TV dial to watch “Sanford and Son,” you may remember the title characters’ truck.

In the sitcom, Fred Sanford and his son, Lamont, own a salvage shop, and they tour the neighborhoods of Los Angeles looking for merchandise in a red, sun-baked, stepside Ford pickup. Four decades later, Wreckless Abandon Racing replicated this iconic look when they built their huge and heavy racing machine.

Let’s dispense immediately with the truck brand rivalry: This homage is sacrilegious. It’s not a Ford at all, but a Chevy—a 1964 C-10, to be precise. But come on, this truck is for a group of self-appointed “regular schmucks” who like to go racing, not dogmatists hellbent on keeping things separated. It’s a mix of parts from both brands and more—a melting pot of racing components. Embracing the Fred Sanford spirit, the team used whatever they had lying around or could take home cheaply.

What started out as a rolling chicane of a crapcan race car came to test its mettle (and hulking slabs of metal) at our 2011 Ultimate Track Car Challenge, the no-holds-barred competition to see which machine can lap VIR the fastest. There, the truck was also dubbed a rolling chicane. That didn’t stop Jim Gorman and his team from having a great time and, after the track and their beverages were both cold, knocking back a few beers in celebration.